BATFE Conducting More Illegal Activity – This Time In Alaska In The Form of Illegal Gun Registry

You would think with all of the recent controversy surrounding the BATFE that the agency would take it easy for a while and go “by the book”. However, that is apparently not the case.

The BATFE in Anchorage, Alaska is requesting that all area dealers provide them with all of their 4473 Forms. 4473 Forms are the forms that both the customer and gun shop fill out during a sale to keep a record of who bought a particular gun and when. The forms are then kept at the gun shop for a set amount of time and are never turned over to authorities unless needed in a criminal investigation or the shop goes out of business. Neither of those situations seem to be in play in Alaska. The BATFE is simply asking all shops for all of their records as far back as 2007.

This amounts to a federal agency building an illegal registry of guns and gun owners. If these records were ever entered into a computer database the BATFE in Alaska would have an instantly searchable database of every type of gun, make and model of gun, serial number, time sold, and a list of guns owned by every gun owner in the area.

If this is allowed to fly in Alaska who knows how long it will be before this practice is extended across the country.

It will be very interesting to see how the BATFE explains this (if they do at all).

Ammo Land (link below) broke the news and is advising gun shops not to comply with the requests unless given a legal reason to do so.

The BATFE has been under fire (pun intended) recently for their role in operation Fast and Furious as well as several other investigations into agency intimidation and not following their own regulations.